


toxophilite

by erzi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 05:45:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19823761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erzi/pseuds/erzi
Summary: Seiji weaves them through this maze of a house, Shuuichi a few steps behind. Adults, mostly in traditional clothing, bow their heads to Seiji, utter obeisances, address him with respect."How?" Shuuichi wonders out loud."How what?""How does your family have all this power?"He shrugs. "We just never let it go, I guess."





	toxophilite

_Come to my house tomorrow_ , Seiji had said, more of a command than the suggestion he'd surely meant it as, but for once Shuuichi wasn't bothered by his tone. Seiji couldn't help the fluid ease of his words, and Shuuichi was curious to see where Seiji had come from, what had sculpted him thus.

After school, following the steady stream of students out the gates, Seiji is waiting for him, bow bag peeking over his head.

Shuuichi matches Seiji's small smile and points to his bow, but Seiji answers his question before it is asked.

"Yes, I always take it with me. You never know when you need it."

"And you don't get in trouble at school for it?"

"No." His smile widens, though not entirely amicably. "I think with my family's money, the administration knows better than to ask."

Seiji leads them to his house. It's in the direction opposite of Shuuichi's, and though the way these streets meander and these trees grow and these houses rise is not much different from what he sees daily, he looks upon them as if he has never seen such sights. The further they walk, the more the sidewalk ends and grass sprouts, the further apart the houses are, the larger their sprawl. Here the land truly is new.

"Are we almost there?" Shuuichi asks, glimpsing the sky past the giant trees guarding their path.

"Almost, yes."

"Are you messing with me? Are there even any houses here in the forest?"

"Mine."

Shuuichi blows air past his smiling lips.

He expects them to come across a clearing Seiji has set up with whatever exorcist art they are practicing today, their mutual home, but all his air soon leaves him.

 _My house_ , Seiji had said, and Shuuichi had imagined a two-story in the suburbs with wooden details and an enviable front garden. What is in front of him is not a house. It is a manor.

He stops walking, gaping.

Seiji stops too and looks at him. "What?"

Shuuichi whirls to him. "You live here?!"

"Yes."

"That's way too much house! Who needs that much house? This isn't even a house; that's an insult to actual houses. Aren't you an only child?"

"I am. But we need room to accommodate all our clan members and whatever guests come along. This house has been in my family for generations, anyway. We didn't build it recently to show off." He resumes walking, tossing a smirk over his shoulder. "Stay close to me so you don't get lost in it, Shuuichi-san."

Shuuichi's feet are soundless on the soft earth as he quickly catches up.

Birdsong hidden in lush trees is accentuated by the sozu's rhythmic rock-striking, the trickle of a small cascade in the pond.

 _He_ lives _here_ , Shuuichi thinks, gawking every which way. _How did he not laugh at my house when he came over?_ Though its architectural ordinariness was the least of its problems.

The poise Seiji carries himself with speaks of a proper upbringing. This place exceeds what Shuuichi had thought, but it certainly explains how Seiji is: the confidence with which he accepts his powers, in how he wields them.

Seiji weaves them through this maze of a house, Shuuichi a few steps behind. Adults, mostly in traditional clothing, bow their heads to Seiji, utter obeisances, address him with respect.

"How?" Shuuichi wonders out loud.

"How what?"

"How does your family have all this power?"

He shrugs. "We just never let it go, I guess."

One family on a pedestal standing for generations, another crumbling when its foundation gave way. But had the Natoris of old really become complacent? Had they ceased to care, ceased to believe, ceased to see? It couldn't have been so simple.

From a window he catches sight of a tree, its present summer resplendence a memory come winter.

Even in nature some things live, some things die. It might be the same for this supernatural that they are.

He faces forward. The hall is empty.

 _Crap_ , he thinks, quickly looking around. Lost in his admiration, his thoughts. "Seiji?"

Distant birds answer him.

But soon: footsteps padding, growing closer, a shaggy black head peering round the corner. "There you are, Shuuichi-san," Seiji says, walking to him. "I told you to stay close to me."

He runs a hand through his hair. "Your house... I got distracted."

Seiji hums and wraps his hand around Shuuichi's wrist, drawing his arm away from his head. He does not let go. "Then I'll have to keep you from it, won't I?" And he walks on, Shuuichi stumbling after as he is led on. It's not a tight hold – he could extricate himself from it – but why would he?

They walk on these wooden floors becoming wood walls, past paper-lined doors neatly sliding open and shut. Seiji's hair swishes on his nape softly, invitingly.

His free hand is moving towards it when Seiji stops, Shuuichi almost running into him. He hides his hand behind his back just as Seiji lets his other hand go.

In front of them is a strip of green, fence-enclosed, leading to a squat building housing a row of targets. An archery range.

Shuuichi gives Seiji a questioning look. "Is that what we're doing today?"

"No." He puts his bow bag on the floor and sits, cross-legged, smile crinkling his eyes. "Today, we do nothing."

Shuuichi blinks down at him. "Nothing?"

"Nothing. So here, sit," he says, brusquely pulling Shuuichi down, their knees bumping. Though it wasn't his fault, Shuuichi apologizes. He adjusts his posture, putting a bit of distance between them. Only a bit.

"Why are we here, then?" he asks after a moment.

"Because there's an exorcist meeting in the back garden," Seiji answers, like it's the most obvious thing.

"Oh." A pause. _So why invite me at all?_

Seiji tilts his head, hair falling in front of his right eye as he looks at Shuuichi. It adds an innocence to him. "Do you like watermelon?"

"Hmm? Oh. Yeah." He folds his hands on his lap, keeping them to himself.

"Perfect." He calls for a servant – a _servant_ – and the fruit is quickly delivered in thick slices dripping red water. Seiji begins to eat, though Shuuichi grabs a slice with some hesitation.

All of his time spent with Seiji until now has been to catch him up with his ancestral calling. That they do nothing doesn't seem right.

"Did you lie?"

Shuuichi turns to him. "Huh?"

"You're not eating it." Seiji's eyes swivel to the watermelon. "Did you lie to not offend me? You didn't have to. I wouldn't care."

"No, I didn't lie, I'm just-" He glances at the archery targets, at the promise of a garden beyond the fence. "Are we really doing nothing?"

"Is it so unbelievable?"

"Well. Yeah."

Seiji smirks, and his mouth is stained ever slightly red. "It's just for today. Summer vacation is coming, and though we might be off school, I intend to increase your training, since we'll have that much more free time." He gestures to the air. " _This_ is your break."

Shuuichi hunches over. "Figures," he sighs, taking a bite from his watermelon. It is cold and sweet and hurts his teeth. Not in a bad way, though. Not in a bad way.

He glances at the bow bag. Wonders something and asks it: "Does your school have an archery club?"

"Yes, but I'm not a member."

"Why not?"

He grins. "I would have no competition."

Shuuichi would like to roll his eyes at that, to offer a laughing _You're so full of yourself_. But he's seen Seiji shoot. The bow becomes an extension of his arm, the arrow a wood-and-iron concentration of his will, feathers fluttering with its release, quivering in its target. Seiji has his arrogance, but it is truthfully born.

Then he wonders something else. Mulls it in his tongue. Should he ask? And he does.

"Could you shoot blindfolded?"

"Of course." His eyes glitter. "I'll show you. I'll be right back."

He disappears inside the main body of the manor and returns shaking his wet hands, drops of water flinging off and catching the light. He wipes them on his pants before opening up his bow bag.

"You don't use a glove?" Shuuichi says. "Or towels to dry your hands, apparently?"

"Gloves are for kyudo. This is different." He holds up his bow by the cloth wrapped around its grip. The sunlight slides off its blackness.

"How so?"

"The bow size, mainly. Mine is smaller since I carry it everywhere. But the principles differ, too." He pulls out an arrow, notching it, tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth in concentration. "Kyudo is about looking pretty and feeling noble, really." He glances at Shuuichi, that eager glitter in his eyes sharpened to glass. "Mine is for killing."

A drop of something wet hits Shuuichi's hand; he jumps, looking down.

Watermelon juice.

"Killing youkai, obviously," Seiji adds, fixing how his feet point to the target. "I would never harm a person." He turns to Shuuichi. "Aren't you going to blindfold me?"

He'd thought Seiji would do so himself, as he has nothing to cover his eyes with. Nothing, except...

"I'm using my hands," he says, standing, going behind Seiji. Despite the year's difference in their ages, Shuuichi is not much taller than him. It annoys him. But maybe he's not hit his growth yet; maybe it is just beginning.

That thought is put aside by a breeze picking up, ruffling Seiji's hair, strands tickling Shuuichi's face. He's standing quite close to him, isn't he? And he's about to put his hands on him to blind him.

"Shuuichi-san?"

"Yes!" he blurts, immediately covering Seiji's eyes. And he realizes he hadn't washed his hands, hadn't even wiped them on his clothes. The watermelon's sticky juice keeps his fingers together, keeps the whole of them to Seiji's skin.

Seiji laughs. "Well, I can't see anything, I assure you. I also closed my eyes." He draws back his right elbow, aims the arrow with his left forefinger, balancing it to the bow, swaying it like a dowsing rod but seeking something purer than water. String taut, muscles set, arrow released.

Shuuichi cannot follow its swift path, only what it's hit: the smallest eye on the target, not perfectly in its middle, but breathtakingly close. His mouth falls open, a laugh spilling out. "Seiji, that's amazing!"

"I'm sure it is, but I can't see, Shuuichi-san."

"Oh. Right." He hastily drops his hands. Looks at the arrow stabbed to the bullseye; looks to Seiji, pride lining his face. Remembers the _twang_ of the arrow leaving the bow, the wind it creates, the neat _thunk_ of the arrow tip finding its mark. It was beautiful, and that his clan wields only paper seems pitiable. He could be something like this, instead. "Do you think you could teach me?"

Seiji thinks about it. "I could," he says, "but I won't."

"What? Why?"

"Archery _is_ amazing, but it leaves your hands like this." He turns them palm-up. Thickness grows like bark at his forefinger, bumps like knots of wood on the sides of his fingertips. Where lines he was born with crisscross his palms, scars that he earned, faded by time, bisect them as well.

Shuuichi's wince is kept away by those very hands suddenly squishing his cheeks.

"And you've got such a pretty face," Seiji says, "that it'd be a shame if your hands looked like mine."

He pulls back and sits down, facing the target.

Shuuichi's face burns with the shape Seiji's hands left behind, and the things inside his head and heart are getting a little kind of very much out of control, which is why he splutters, "But you're pretty, too."

Seiji turns his head up, an expression other than smugness for once on his face. In another state of mind Shuuichi might have savored it, but now, he hastily adds, "I would date you."

And realizing as soon as he's said it, as soon as Seiji's eyes go wide, that this has worsened things, he finishes with a weak, "If I was a girl, I mean."

Seiji's face falls – subtly, the way a plant shoot might come to rest after a wisp of a breeze. He nods slowly. "I see."

Shuuichi hurriedly sits, putting more distance between them than earlier. He looks down at his hands. They are sticky-pink with watermelon juice, threaded blue with veins. Creased where they are meant to be, smooth where no hard labor has coarsened them.

He reaches for another watermelon slice at the same time Seiji does, their faces so close Shuuichi's vision briefly blurs.

 _Back off_ , he tells himself, but he's transfixed on Seiji, who is as still. He can taste the watermelon on Seiji's stained lips by sight alone, by the sweetness already bursting on his tongue, by Seiji's tiny fruit-scented exhales fluttering on his face.

Something flaps and they jump away from each other. A bird has taken flight from a nearby tree. Shuuichi watches it fly away to nothing, heart hammering in his throat, waiting for Seiji to speak, because he certainly cannot do it.

And now something slightly rasps.

"You can have it."

From the corner of his eye, he sees Seiji has pushed the plate to him. He turns away, shoving his hands beneath his thighs. "I'm not very hungry anymore. You can have it."

"I'm not hungry anymore, either."

Shuuichi swallows. It is sweet.

He should apologize – he's not sure what exactly was wrong with being so close to Seiji, but he has to say something – but it won't come out.

"Shuuichi-san."

He picks his head up.

"It's fine."

"What's fine?" he says, dumbly, loudly, and feels his eye twitch.

Seiji smiles at him, but it isn't anything real. "I've changed my mind. Let's learn paper talisman wards today." He stands.

They're going to ignore what had happened. That's fine. Really. "Okay," he says, following Seiji.

The plate is left behind. Shuuichi almost asks why, but he soon sees a servant shuffle over to get it. This is a life he cannot possibly comprehend.

Seiji moves his arms as he walks, opposing motion to his legs. The calluses on his hands are barely visible from here. Shuuichi had to see them up close to know anything marred them. Those were hands that had known pain.

They aren't beautiful, but they are good. They're good hands.

"Seiji," he says, earning him a look over the shoulder accompanied by a raised eyebrow. _Despite what you said,_ _I like your hands_. He presses his tongue to his cheek. _I wouldn't mind holding your hand_. No, that's worse; his ears warm up.

"Did you say my name?" Seiji asks, quickly looking back in front to see where he is going.

"No," Shuuichi lies. "I didn't."

He loosely curls his hands. This is something he should keep.

**Author's Note:**

> one day i will stop writing fics based on stuff i read but today is not [that](https://66.media.tumblr.com/3372251fbf256f5ab2ed6be4d68b57ef/c8c8909324ccee99-15/s640x960/aa2b095407b989c3341f16b98a6ceb9665ab13c2.jpg) [day](https://66.media.tumblr.com/436c0716f973b1b902283f305e7215cf/c8c8909324ccee99-03/s640x960/cec46d3b361c1dd965ecdc686082fce30606fea7.jpg)


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